Hello everyone and welcome to Episode Sixty One!  I hope all of you remain safe and healthy out there as we slooooowly move into spring here in the northern hemisphere.  April has been more like March - cold and blustery, and I am quite ready to get on with spring.

Now before we get to the show notes portion of the show notes, I want to take a minute to thank all of the show’s patrons, including our newest Patreon supporter, Jason Folt. Thank you, Jason!  Alert listeners will remember Drs. Folt and Brandehoff from Episode 59.  And thanks as always to all of the folks who help keep the show going and to reach fifty-plus episodes!. To others in the listening audience, if you like the show, please consider supporting it via the So Much Pingle Patreon page. You can also support the show via one-time contributions via PayPal or Venmo (please contact me via email to [email protected]).

Also, thanks to the folks who have responded to my request for weird/unusual/spooky stories from the field, and I still need a few more so if you’re sitting on something like that, please get in touch.  I recently had a nice chat with Rob Kreutzer, the one and only Smetlogik, about some crazy / creepy happenings.

I also want to give a shout-out to Patrick, Ian, and Spencer Connolly, winners of a recent trivia contest on Smetlogik's YouTube channel, and listeners of this show.  Congrats guys!

Our guest for this episode is Dr. Joseph Apodaca, or JJ as he is commonly called.  He wears two very large hats – JJ is the founder and lead scientist of Tangled Bank Conservation, and he is also the Executive Director of the Amphibian and Reptile Conservancy, or ARC.  That is a lot of work right there and I’m not sure when he sleeps, but I knew I wanted to talk with him about both Tangled Bank and ARC and we touch on some other interesting topics as well.  One of the things we touched on is salamander genomes, and JJ pointed me to an article about them in Scientific American - very interesting read and I hope you all enjoy. And thanks once again for coming on the show, JJ - it was so much fun!

Thanks for listening everyone! And as always, please keep the comments and suggestions coming, and please take time to rate the show on your podcast platform! The show email is [email protected], and there’s also a So Much Pingle group on Facebook, for discussion, comments, feedback, suggestions, herp confessions, snakes on an inclined plane, guesses as to the size of your own genome, tips for herping better, etc.

Cheers! Mike